Having acquired a reputation for his handling
of low vernacular English with a series of plays which, with the solitary
exception of A Slight Ache, involved working-class or lower
middle-class people, Pinter moved into the West End of London and
into a more elegant and sophisticated milieu with The Collection.
The four characters in this play - originally written for television
but since frequently performed on the stage - all come from the world
of the rag trade. Harry Kane is a successful middle-aged man in the
wholesale clothing business who lives in what is clearly a homosexual
m6nage, with a young designer, Bill Lloyd, whom he has discovered.
The peace of their household is disturbed by the intrusion of James
Horne, who runs a boutique with his wife Stella; James has been told
by Stella that she had been unfaithful to him with Bill - during a
visit to Leeds, where the season's collections were being shown. According
to Stella's story Bill, who was staying at the same hotel, had followed
her to her room and, taking advantage of her loneliness, more or less
raped her.

Is Stella's story true? Can it be true?
And can anyone not directly involved ever know, ever verify, whether
it is true or not? The basic situation is reminiscent of Pirandello's
Cosi(se vi pare) - Right You Are (If You Think You Are)
- where two, and eventually three, incompatible stories confront
each other without hope of verification. The difference is that in
Pirandello's play either one, two or all three of the characters involved
may be mad and therefore unable to realize the true situation. In
The Collection it is not a matter of madness but of subtle
conscious or subconscious motivations. At first sight Bill, who has
been shown as a member of a homosexual m6nage, seems most unlikely
to have committed so brazen a heterosexual act of aggression. And,
indeed, when confronted with James, he denies the whole story. After
a bout of rough treatment by the wronged husband however, he tells
him another version of the incident:

The truth ... is that it never happened
All that happened was... you were right, actually, about going up
in the lift ... we... got out of the lift, and then suddenly she
was in my arms. Really wasn't my fault, nothing was further
from my mind, biggest surprise of my life, must have found me terribly
attractive quite suddenly, I don't know . . . but I . . . I didn't
refuse. Anyway, we just kissed a bit, only a few minutes, by the
lift, no one about, and that was that - she went to her room. The
rest of it just didn't happen. I mean, I wouldn't do that sort of
thing. I mean that sort of thing ... it's just meaningless.

And yet, immediately afterwards, when
James tries to substantiate his story by bringing in the further detail
that while he, James, phoned Stella, Bill was sitting on her bed,
Bill corrects him:

Not sitting. Lying.

So he is teasing James? And by outdoing
James's more lurid details, throwing doubts on his own earlier, partial,
admissions ?

Harry, Bill's middle-aged flat-mate, who
clearly has extremely possessive feelings about the young man, has
become suspicious by the mysterious telephone calls and traces of
secret visitors in his flat. James, the wronged husband, on the other
hand, is becoming fascinated with Bill: he tells Stella that he wants
to co and see him again; that he had dinner with him the previous
evening (which we, the audience know is not true, or at least not
entirely: this gives us a means of gauging the readiness of the characters
involved to make up stories by enlarging and elaborating minor details).
He begins to praise Bill:

... I've come across a man I can respect.
It isn't often that you can do that, that that happens, and really
I suppose I've got you to thank .... Thanks.

While this may well be the irony of the
injured party and a way to rub salt in the wife's wounds, there is
also an element of genuine feeling behind it:

I mean, you couldn't say he wasn't a
man of taste. He's brimming over with it. Well, I suppose he must
have struck you the same way. No, really, I think I should thank
you, rather than anything else. After two years of marriage it looks
as though, by accident, you've opened up a whole new world for me.

While James goes back to visit Bill once
again, Harry comes to see Stella. When confronted with James's persecution
of Bill, Stella denies the whole story:

I mean, Mr. Lloyd was in Leeds, but
I hardly saw him, even though we were staying at the same hotel.
I never met him or spoke to him ... and then my husband suddenly
accused me of ... it's really been very distressing.

In the meantime James and Bill are engaged
in a highly ambivalent confrontation which oscillates between extreme
friendliness and sudden outbursts of hatred; it culminates in a sort
of duel with knives. When Bill tries to catch a knife thrown against
his face by James, he cuts his hand. At this moment Harry, who has
been watching them from the background, enters the conversation. He
tells James that he has it from his wife's own mouth that the whole
story of marital infidelity was pure invention. And when James points
out that Bill, after all, confirmed Stella's story, Harry launches
into a savage attack on Bill:

Bill's a slum boy, you see, he's got
a slum sense of humour. That's why I never take him along with me
to parties. Because he's got a slum mind.

James is ready to leave and to accept his
wife's latest version of the story. But at that moment Bill offers to
tell the truth:

I never touched her ... we sat ... in
the lounge, on a sofa for two hours ... talked we talked about it
... we didn't move from the lounge never went to her room ... just
talked about what we would do ... if we did get to her room two
hours ... we never touched ... we just talked about it.

James leaves. The last scene of the play
is between him and Stella. He repeats Bill's latest story:

He wasn't in your room. You just talked
about it, in the lounge. (Pause)

That's the truth, isn't it?

(Pause)

You just sat and talked about what you
would do if you went to your room. That's what you did.

Any of the different versions of
the incident around which TheCollection revolves may
be true - or none. The point is that we have an abundance of possible
motivations for each possible version. For example: Bill is a homosexual,
he is therefore unlikely to have raped Stella. Yet, from Harry's wild
outburst about how he found Bill in the slums it is also possible infer
that Bill may have been made into a homosexual by older man who offered
him social advancement, a good job, life in a middle-class milieu, thus
his homosexuality might ha been imposed upon him, he might have adopted
that way life against his will or natural inclination. In that case
a sudden heterosexual impulse would be understandable as a desperate
attempt to escape from Harry's bondage. Or, indeed, not having the courage
for a real assault on a lady, Bill might have confined his attempts
to break away from the homosexual menage to the world of fantasy, he
might just have talked with a woman about the possibility of such an
escapade, without ever thinking of actually indulging in it. Conversely:
Stella is clearly a somewhat frustrated wife (perhaps because James
is a latent homosexual - he certainly gives some indications this direction),
she may have invented her story, to make James jealous and activate
his interest in her; or, again, being sex-starved she may have provoked
and seduced Bill. Moreover, each of the two chief 'culprits' has very
good reason why he should tell any particular version of the story at
a particular moment. Bill, for example, when first confront by James,
may well be revenging himself for the intrusion increasing his
suffering through tantalizing details; Stella would obviously deny the
whole thing to Harry, a stranger whom she does not regard as qualified
to partake of her family secrets. And even the final, most plausible
version which Bill tells James at the end, may be a subtle way revenging
himself on Harry, who has just castigated him in the most cruel manner
about his slum origins. By saying that talked with Stella about lovemaking,
Bill is in fact telling Harry that he is dreaming of breaking away from
him, returning to a heterosexual life.

The two objects of jealousy in the play
are matched again the two sufferers from jealousy: James is jealous
of Bill, but Harry is not only jealous of Stella, he is also, and perhaps
more so, jealous of the obvious love/hate relationship which seems to
be developing between Bill and James. His outburst against Bill for
example is clearly directed to James, whom he is warning of the ingratitude
and baseness of mind of the slum urchin whom he has raised to his own
level.

But The Collection is more than merely
a highly ingenious construction, an equation with three or more unknowns
which allows of a multitude of equally valid solutions. It also contains
a social comment on the situation in those strata of English middle-class
society (and they are, after all, by no means insignificant) where homosexual
attitudes among the men play a decisive role in determining the social
climate. This aspect of the play became much clearer on the stage than
in the original television version. On television the scene shifted
between Harry's and James's apartments, on the stage they remained juxtaposed
all the time - with a narrow street set, containing the telephone kiosk
in the centre. As a result, Stella remained in view during the scenes
when the three men squabbled among themselves; she just sat on her sofa,
playing with her kitten, terribly alone and neglected. And although
Stella has a relatively brief part, measured by the lines she has to
speak, she gradually emerged as the true tragic heroine of the piece:
she may have been the original bone of contention between the men, yet
she is soon lost from sight by them: their very involvement in fighting
transforms their relationship into one of intimacy and strong personal
concern with each other, a male world of rough and tumble from which
the woman is forever excluded and condemned to sit at home, neglected,
abandoned, playing with her kitten.